Dash | The Evolution of Digital Cash Beyond 2025 - Joël Valenzuela | ETHDam III - 2025

Welcome to East to East to East to East. So, hey everyone. Happy post lunch coma. Um hopefully this will be a little bit of a defibrillator to your heart. Get you and wake up.

Wake the up and get ready for the freedom here. Um so, uh before I get into I I always do my little poll. It's a great way of taking the things off. Who here has ever transacted in cryptocurrency? Meaning, you've bought or sold something for cryptocurrency ever in your life?

Hands up. Hands up. Real quick, anyone not anyone never buy anything with crypto? Wow. This is actually This might be a first.

This is a really good group here. I did notice that some people over at the Dash table were talking about how uh like everyone seemed super receptive to payments and stuff. It's not more than usual crypto conferences. So, it's a good group. Now, who here has done that in the last year?

Bought something or sold something with crypto in the last year. Okay, still most people. How about in the last month? Half. Half.

That's not bad. How about the last week? bought something with crypto in the last week. The week and the month are almost the same, which is pretty nice. How about in the last day?

There we go. That usually that goes very very low by now. So, that's very good. And finally, who buys who spends over 50% of all their spending using crypto? Any listen, if it's a blockchain, it counts right now.

So, we actually got a couple people who do that, which is is very good. Um, and as a random other question before I kick into this, who's vaguely aware about like the history of money and where stuff comes from? Actually, again, a very educated group. Well, this is great. So, um, first of all, my name is Joel.

I run business development marketing for Dash, which is kind of an OG in the crypto space, especially in the payment space. 11 years old, which is kind of ancient in blockchain type terms. Um, so what I'm here to talk about today is the evolution of digital cash. Basically, where we came from, you know, pure sound money all the way to the present day and like where the next step. And unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the little fish that turns into a monkey and all that kind of stuff, but this is this is kind of the similarity to this.

All right. Um, let's see. Where do I point this when I click it? There we go. All right.

Cool. So, let's start out with the the the old school Peter Schiff here. Gold coins. So, gold being the the scarce money, the scarce store of value that people use. Um, people don't maybe think about it, but coinage was a payment rail innovation because you don't just say, "Here you go.

Here's a lump of gold." It's like, "Well, how do I weigh this? How do I know it's coin?" You know, anything. when you actually turn it into a coin, that piece now it says how much it is, like the amount it is, and you have the mint that prints it to say it's like, okay, you can trust that it's this mint that does this.

And so then you actually you have a ton of information printed on that piece of gold that actually says this is what we need to make this transaction. And so obviously there's some level of trust in the minting process a little bit, but for the most part, not really. especially because you can you can do the old school um fe you know the analog version of running your own node and actually like test the coin see oh is this actually gold wow weigh it etc and so that made it kind of easy to transport and spend of course if you want to spend a lot then you have you know a big pile of heavy gold coins that's not always the best so next thing I hate to say it but this is sort of an innovation is paper bills which used to be called like gold and silver certificates where this is basically saying me the bank I have a big pile of gold this is some of it you can redeem this IOU for something and it makes it so much more convenient to transact and we still maybe not so much in the Netherlands but a lot of places in the world still use paper bills to buy things even though it's there's no gold behind it anymore for the most part um it still is a much more efficient way of trading unfortunately then you start to in introduce that counterparty risk of there's an issuing bank. Do they have the money? Did they get robbed and not tell you?

You know, it's Fort Knox. Let's look in there, etc. It just becomes a a a problem with trust and we kind of start seeing this trajectory of even though things are getting more efficient for payments and commerce, you know, and the economy is growing as a result. Um, we start to see the insidious uh creeping in of trust. Got to price it higher.

Then we get to cards, which whether it's digital or plastic or whatever, now you don't have to have a stack of things. You can just have one thing that you just use as long as there's a balance. And then you can also transact across great distances. You don't have to go fold up a piece of paper and put it in the mail like my mother used to do. But you can actually transact online, you know, over the phone.

Like who's random thing. Who has ever bought something with a card over the phone? only a couple of of ancient people like myself. I I did it like one time I think when I was young, very young. And so this improves so many different things.

But then also unfortunately introduces this whole this whole censorship vector of now you have an account, now you are identified, now that can be censored. They can just shut off your card. They can't shut off your paper bills really. they have to shut off all the paper bills or they have to like oh these few ones are marked as spicy or whatever and then it's just much harder to censor. So this is starting to get to the peak sensor where now you have paper money in a bank in a bank and then you use your card at fully at the discretion of the government and the bank that does this.

They can shut you down at any time. So again much more efficient than before but now we're hitting into the dystopia. So, next thing, Bitcoin. And what I'm going to say, I'm not talking 2009 Bitcoin, 2014 Bitcoin. I'm kind of talking 2025 Bitcoin.

So, I have to say, yeah, I'm not going to get on my soap box about, you know, Bitcoin used to work this way in the FE, whatever. Um this we're talking about the improvement that is Bitcoin today over everything in the past there where you have a system that's like gold but it's much easier to um and don't roast me about any of this like is it really sound money like gold different time right but you actually get to verify things easily anyone anywhere can kind of easily verify how much is in this etc and the scarcity of it the trans the transferability you can actually do that if you're a whale you know a big chunk of it you can move it here there and so the key advantage of this is I think it would be a lot easier to do representations of this the the crypto version of like paper paper bills for Bitcoin paper Bitcoin is a lot better than paper gold is a lot more efficient you can verify things again this is an improvement and anytime you talk to Bitcoin maximalists they go on and on about these things that unfortunately are true that it's a lot better than traditional gold and stuff like that and like oh look how great it is and all that is true but then again we're still at the the fish has little legs now we're not all the way into the monkey stage yet right we're still evolving so then I would say representative generally by Bitcoin Cash but basically original Bitcoin vision is kind of I would say like the ground floor for the amazing innovation of cryptocurrency, which is you have a digital gold type thing, a digital scarce sound money that then you can send to anyone in the world efficiently without a third party facilitating the transaction. And this is kind of in my view, this is why we're all here is because of this key innovation at this stage that kind of allowed us to really evolve money past just well, you know, it's it's like paper bills for gold or whatever, gold certificates, but it's better now. We're actually at some new territory, which is pretty cool. And so unfortunately there's, you know, unfortunately there's still some levels of evolving past that such as not really any privacy features built into the protocol and no no instant settlement.

There's a lot of like conversation about, okay, well, if it's unconfirmed, it's still probably fine, but it's not 100% confirmed. So the exchange is going to make you wait, you know, 15 fortnights before they accept it, etc., etc. So the next step would be what I would call old school Dash, which is the basic peer-to-peer cache kind of thing, but with some improvements. You got instant transaction finality.

You got some privacy functions, you got security, you got a bunch of other things, and it you send it, receive it, and it just works. And this is kind of what I've been using for most of my money again before, you know, outside of any showing opportunities here um since late 2016 or so, early 2017. Um but so I'm here to tell you today that that's great, but not good enough. There's extra levels to what we need to be able to transact. And as a good thing I'm speaking to an educated audience because when we're talking about what do we need for daily commerce to do daily payments to do things like that uh sending receiving to an address is the underpinning of how awesome this is but it's not everything.

So we got to think if I want to pay anyone in this room how would I do it? What's step number one? I have to talk to them. Okay. And so I could talk to them physically be like, "Hi."

Or I can send a message. That's a second that's another app you have to use. You got to send text them. You got to signal hopefully signal message them. Hey, how's it going?

Hey, can I pay you back for etc. There's a lot of communication that happens there. And then they say, "Hey, can I I want an address so I can pay you." And then you do that. Then you copy paste your wallet.

Then you send and then it works. And so but there's a lot of this extra stuff that happens. How much is it for? or well it's this amount of you know Dash tokens of Bitcoin of whatever you you're using but how much is that like what the debt was denominated in was it a $25 lunch that now you know was it €40 for drinks that now you're going to do a representative amount of whatever coin where is that recorded probably in your signal message is back for this etc but we're still the money hasn't evolved to that the point where we're just using it we have an underpinning again, but we're not all the way there. So, and obviously speaking in big general concepts here, but then we got this guy, happy damn everyone.

Um, Vitalic says hi. But so, we have some extra things that are built into the protocol at this point where now you have like programmability. You can do stuff like conditional payments, you can transfer tokens that are representative things, etc., etc. you start to have some more programmable features in there.

Um, now there are obviously some limitations and drawbacks. Um, such as um, who knows who Moxy Marlin Spike is? Quite the educated audience. Again, this is part of this is because I made sure to invite everyone that I thought was awesome to come here, but also part of it is because everyone awesome was already here. So Moxy Maron Spike the signal founder uh he wrote this scathing critique of web 3 which I think is a very worth reading if you're in the space uh because basic the summary of this thing and he said a bunch of stuff is yeah all this web 3 stuff is decentralized in theory but no one's running their own node to do all this stuff.

You usually have to pay infura or some other infrastructure provider to do this. And all the data, the decentralized data that's out there, someone has to index it. And so if there's an indexing service that says, you know, that categorize everything and then you go and ping them and say, I want this piece of data. And then they give you some data. And then is it the one you asked for?

Trust me, bro. So, we're getting evolving to the point where we're starting to get to where we can actually start use this as a replacement for all these centralized systems. So, just kind of the the teaser for the next thing. We need a new clicker, too. There we go.

Okay. So after many many years uh Dash released a an upgrade last year called evolution which seeks to address some of these things. Basically the centerpiece of course is usernames and contact lists at the protocol level. So you can actually friend someone on the blockchain, look them up, send payments um privately to each other and your transaction data is encrypted, but it the other stuff that's not just the blockchain payment of this many units of Dash for lunch or what like the actual it was worth this much, it's for rent, etc. is still recorded and encrypted on the actual blockchain so that you can have everything that you were then kind of relying on stuff like say writing down a signal message or putting an Excel spreadsheet or whatever else all that kind of stuff is actually contained in the network itself and most importantly um because all the data that's written to evolution is indexed and queryable and you can get a proof with the query you don't have to trust some indexer or node service that you you're getting the data that you ask for.

You can just ask for it and you get exactly what you want very fast and you don't have to pay a third party, etc. So, at this point, we're finally starting to get to something that works for average use cases that you don't have to offload a bunch of trust. So where your base money and the base transaction rails are still good and they're decentralized, but where everything around that if they censor you, you're still kind of screwed. So we're finally getting in this evolutionary and love the DNA strands, right? This evolutionary journey.

We're finally getting to the point where this starts to make sense as something that is a replacement for centralized money to where now I can, you know, send someone some money and I the rest of the equation isn't kind of being offloaded to some centralized provider. And so obviously there's tons of people, tons of projects working towards making money work in a decentralized, trustless, etc. way. Uh the good news is it's finally starting to become kind of kind of come into focus is it's doable. So um my experience in the space obviously I've been using crypto for 12 or so years and I haven't earned fiat in 10 years been just doing that.

It's as an experiment, right? To try to sort of say, "Let me try this and then let me figure out where I fail and then, oh, now I got to learn something that didn't work." And then you go say, "Hey guys, we need to do this. Okay, let's do this." And then we go there.

Oh, there's another thing. Finally, it's starting to become I hesitate to say easy because nothing's easy, but it's starting to become doable to be able to use cryptocurrency as a replacement for fiat currency in your life. And I would say like I I think that most people in this room could probably start doing this within a couple months if you you figure it out. And obviously, you know, there's a bunch of different cryptocurrencies that could be used. I'm focusing on just like my tunnel vision on what I have some control over and what I can actually guarantee, etc.

So, this is, you know, leave this up. Take they're on flyers at the Dash table, by the way. So, if you're just like, I don't want to take out my phone right now and look at this, get a flyer. But, so I'm backwardsville. I'm going to start at the bottom with Dash Pay.

It's the wallet that has usernames and contact list. I don't know if the iOS version is rolled out yet at this point, but if you download it, it'll just have that anyway later. But just a fun username wallet. You can friend me. I'm same as my exhandle, the desert links.

I will send you some money probably, very likely. So just at the top, the hardest thing that most people who try to live on crypto encounter is how am I going to pay my mortgage? How am I going to pay my rent, my utilities, etc. Well, there you go. U if you're in the US, Spritz works great.

I did pay quite a few bills not too long ago just using that. Swapin is for Europeans. Uh it works great in Europe. I know. Does anyone hear you swapping, by the way?

Raise your hand. Yeah, we got a couple people. Yeah. So, it works and a new sort of comer there. Uh, Zipto works for a lot of the rest of the world, whether it's obviously US, but then also Mexico, Indonesia, uh, Philippines, India, Guatemala, I don't remember how many others, but a lot of the world, I think I've actually estimated that just on the bill pay front alone, about 2.

8 billion people around the world could pay almost all their bills with Dash. And that's that's not nothing, right? That's a good chunk of people. Now, we just need to get a small percentage of those people actually doing that and then we're in business. And then, of course, um if you know merchants close to you that take crypto directly, that's always the best option.

Always pay someone straight in crypto. For everything else, there's Bit Refill, which should be they should pay me for this actually, but um yeah, they might. Well, it's not going to go to me, but you know, it'll it'll maybe pay another plane ticket to go out and yell at another crowd of people about random gold coins and stuff. But with Bit Re, first off, I did use Bit Refill to buy an eim so I have data planned when I'm here. But like Amazon, you buy something off Amazon, just go to Bit Refill, get an Amazon gift code for exactly the amount you want, throw it in there, you're good.

You want to go, you know, there's a what's the delivery the delivery app that you see all the bicycles around here? Who knows what that is? Yeah, the the orange one with Yeah, you can get you can pay for that in Dash if you want. They have that on Bit Refill. Um Piggy Cards is another one that is kind of a new entrance that sometimes they have really good discounts if you want to save some money on that.

And then finally, of course, Travala is there's a million travel options out there. Uh, Travala I think is very nice because first off it works but also um sometimes you don't think when you book like a hotel or something like that um then you want to they want a card for incidentals and oh card means fiat. Oh, what if I don't have one? Oh, you're screwed. I've been there before.

Um, Travala has been known I I'm not sure how universal the policy is, but when you book flights or you book hotels or whatever, they will generate a card with your name on it and use that to pay for it. So if they say like the ID identity of the person whose card the name's on, whatever, it just smooths over the thing so you don't have to deal with a bunch of different things. So that's kind of the picture, right? We got the you go from the bottom of gold coins all the way up to the latest in digital cash. And we still obviously have a bunch of different steps to go from there.

But that's on the tech side. And then in the practical side, here's just what I could stuff on a slide to tell you how to start living entirely off of crypto for a lot of people at least or at least a big chunk of this. So if you can pay your bills, like your utility bills, your groceries, travel, some basic things like that with crypto, that's like at least 80% of everything, right? Like maybe there's some other things where like, well, you know, I have a mortgage is a t it only take comes out of this one bank account. Okay, then pay your electricity or well I have to have a loan with this.

Okay. Um, who here after just looking at this squinting at the slide for a while feels like they could spend crypto for at least 50% of their spending for everything. We got a good chunk of this room. Yeah. So, what can I say?

You got to try it out. So, um, thanks for everyone for being here. Remember that what gives crypto value isn't the VCs. It isn't, you know, government buying a strategic reserve of it. No shade.

It's not all that stuff. It's this is a tool. This is freedom tech for free people. If you don't use it, goes away. The more you use it, the more you find out it sucks and needs to be fixed and then you get to fix it more and then it works for everyone.

We're being very close to a mass an early mass adoption event for cryptocurrency and yeah, it's time to start using freedom money. Use it or lose it. Thanks everyone. Well, I have uh I have kind of like one question. Uh well, actually there's one just popped up on the slideo.

Are there any nonkyc payment solutions? Yes. So everything here should be non KYC except for the first two. And in Europe, I mean, listen, that's a European problem. That's not like there's only so far you can do.

Um, Zipto does have bill pay in the US, but unlike Spritz, they don't require KYC. Okay. So, if you wanted to live in the US or Mexico or one of those places, you could do that all without KYC hopefully. Okay. And thank you for sharing.

The second question is there's a lot of complexity behind all of these tools, right? I think we touched on that yesterday where, you know, there's a lot of things that people might not understand. Is there a version of the future where maybe like I have my AI agent, it can use all of these tools and do all of those things without really any input for me while protecting my privacy? Because maybe that would make it easier for everyone to use. Yes.

And also to rephrase the question, will everything be absolutely perfect one day and I have to make no effort whatsoever? Possibly. Yes. Let's hope for that. Yeah, but at the same time, if you can write down 12, 24 words and practice scanning a QR code with your phone and pressing the send button a few times, you can do a lot of this.

Like literally, that's what like when I paid my bill with Spritz last week, I went in and entered my account number for whatever biller and then the bill came up and I entered the fiat amount that they charge and then gave me a QR code. I pulled out my phone. Who's ever scanned a QR code and paid from a crypto wallet? No one put your hand up. You do that and then your bill's paid.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thanks everyone.

Thank you.